Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia

5. Idylls in Outer Mongolia

5. Idylls in Outer Mongolia We may note that, in these experiments, the sign "=" may stand for the words "isconfused with." G. SPENCER-BROWN, The Laws of Form He started to say: "I am a moonie. But I doubt if I'm the moonie you're—" But they led him, roughly, off through the imitation jungle. Rusted metal showed through the door's gray paint: The amazing lock contraption actually had a hole for a key; bright red letters spelled out EXIT. They pushed through into a cement stairwell. He protested once and got a shove for it; they hurried him up. The walls and steps and banisters were grimed to an extent for which neither youth on Mars nor maturity on Triton had prepared him. More apprehensive each flight, he kept thinking: Earth is an old world . . . an old, old world. They pulled him, breathless with the climb, out on a narrow sidewalk as a good number of people hurried past (who, in the less than fifteen seconds he got to see them, must, he decided, have only three basic clothing styles the lot); only one glanced. Above irregular building tops (he had never seen irregular building tops before), the air was a grainy gray-pink, like a sensory shield gone grubby (was that skyl With atmosphere in it . . .?). A warm, foul odor drifted in the street (equally astonishing). As they pushed him to the vehicle, a surprising breeze (it was the first breeze he'd ever felt not produced by blower convections from some ventilator grate within meters) carried with it a dozen, clashing, and unpleasant smells. "In here!" They opened the vehicle door and shoved him down into a seat; "sky"-colored ticking pushed from one open seam. The two uni135 136 Trouble on Triton formed strangers (some kind of e-girls) stalked around the other side, leaving him momentarily alone with clambering thoughts (I could run! I could run now ...!), but the unfamiliarity of everything (and the conviction that there was some mistake) paralyzed him: Then they were inside too; the doors slammed: the vehicle dropped straight down, and was caught up by, and bounced into, a subterranean stream of traffic with the jerkiest acceleration and, save for the Earth-landing, the strongest, he'd ever felt. Ten minutes later he was yanked ("All right! I'm not trying to resist ! I'm coming. I'm—") and yanked again from the car and hauled past towering buildings and finally marched into one that might have been eighty, a hundred eighty, or eight hundred years old (the oldest extant structure in Bellona was a hundred and ten years old; in Tethys, no more than seventy-five). He had not even noticed this time if there were sky outside or not. A lift with a grimy brass gate took them up three floors (which seemed silly, as they had just walked up at least eight in the hotel): he was led across a hallway and shoved (one of his sandals slipped and he went down on one bare knee; he was wearing only shorts and a light V-shirt) into a cement-floored room with paint-peeled plaster walls. The door shut behind him; as he stood up, rubbing his knee (yes, the one he'd sprained last year), there were loud clicks and clashes as bars and locks and catches were thrown. The window was too high to see out, even if you (which he didn' t because his knee hurt) jumped. The metal door was dull-gray, with scuffs and scratches a t . . . kicking level! The room was maybe ten feet by eight. There was no furniture. He stayed in it almost five hours. Getting hungrier, getting thirstier, finally he had to go to the bathroom . Beside the door, set in the corner of the cement floor, was a green, metal drain. He urinated in it and wondered where he was supposed to do anything else. He was sitting in the corner across from it, when the door, clattering its sunken locks, pushed open. Two red and black uniformed guards stepped in, yanked him to his feet, and held him flat against the wall, while a portly, bald man in the least comfortable-lookingof the three basic styles came in and said: "All right. What do you know about these people?" Bron really thought he meant the guards. "The moonie delegation!" Idylls in Outer...